BNP pleads for cash after reported DDoS assault

Updated The website of the British National Party is back online following a reported distributed denial of service attack over the weekend.

Nick Griffin, leader of the far-right political party, is appealing for £5,000 urgently to purchase hardware and servers to keep the site online in the run-up to the European and local elections next month. In an email to supporters, Griffin writes that the "BNP website [was] taken offline in largest cyber attack in recorded history" and of a scale seen only once before in a 2001 attack against Microsoft.

The email (addressed to "Fellow Patriots") claims that the assault originated from "eastern Europe and Russia" and was also directed against Clear Channel, a firm which reportedly provides billboard advertising to the BNP, as well as the party website.

However a spokeswoman for Clear Channel said that it's systems were not hit by a denial of service attack.

A conspiracy by "Marxist cyber criminals" campaigning against the BNP is alleged to be behind the assault, which remains ongoing, according to an appeal email, which was sent out on Monday.

The size of the renewed assault is unparalleled and there is no doubt that whoever has organised this has had to pay out a serious amount of money to the criminal underworld.

On Friday the servers of Clear Channel, part of a huge conglomerate that provides billboard advertising to the BNP, suffered a similar attack. Their IT professionals tracked the criminal activity back to a notorious "anti-fascist" organisation openly aligned to the Labour Party and supported by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. This organisation was protesting at the decision by Clear Channel to allow the BNP to display advertising in support of our European Election Campaign.

As a consequence of the criminal actions against Clear Channel we understand that their legal team is currently in the process of issuing writs against the perpetrators which as well as civil actions will involve the possibility of potential criminal charges including racketeering.

BNP Deputy Leader Simon Darby alleges in a blog posting that the organization behind the attack is Searchlight, a well known group of anti-fascist campaigners.

A spokesman for Searchlight dismissed these claims as baseless mud-slinging.

"We're amused and honoured at the suggestion but this wasn't actually our doing," a spokesman told El Reg. He added that although the campaign group does not condone illegal activity is was "disappointed" in reports that Clear Channel was aiding the BNP's advertising efforts.

The BNP's Darby said it had reported its suspicions about the attack to MI5 and the police, actions only likely to result in a charge of wasting police time, according to Searchlight. ®